


The Truest Madness

by only1tonid



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-11-06
Packaged: 2018-02-24 07:21:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2573021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/only1tonid/pseuds/only1tonid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What really made Angelus consider opening Acathla a good idea? How does a dead gypsy serve to change his unlife yet again?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Truest Madness

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sweet Sixteen](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2459480) by [Awal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Awal/pseuds/Awal). 



> I tried to write something for last year’s IWRY but the muse scampered off until it came back for a longer fic I’m working on. It wasn’t until I was inspired by Awal’s Sweet Sixteen on day 2 that I could finally finish a thought… it is from a similar perspective, but a post-Innocence/Surprise timeline… All props to Awal for her genius that spurred this plot bunny as well as Angelus2Hot, Dark Star, and all other prior hosts and writers for keeping this marathon and BA alive. I feel honored to finally join your ranks if by no means on the same talent or tenure level. Hope everybody likes what I came up with!!

Buffy Summers smiled and nodded as Willow continued babbling about this and that. Xander sat nearby offering the occasional joke to ensure his presence was never forgotten. They had welcomed her into their midst over a year ago, especially after losing their lifelong third, Jesse McNally. They and the world considered them her best friends and for the most part it was true. They were convinced they knew just everything worth knowing about her. And she guessed in a way they did, but in her soul, she knew they were missing out on a lot. Ironically, without any of the details, Cordelia probably knew her better down deep. Because to truly know & accept Buffy Summers, they would have to know it all: Sunnydale High Buffy, Slayer Buffy, and LA Buffy. Only one could claim that, as even living on the Hellmouth all of their lives had fully opened their world view to include many, if any, shades of grey. So she coasted like a Technicolor butterfly through their monotone lives, alone and only a little lonely.

They would be shocked to know her, and she feared not even Giles, the closest thing to a father she had left, would be able to fully deal with it all. Most of her nearest and dearest only really knew Sunnydale High Buffy, even those who knew she was the Slayer saw it as more of responsibility than the integral part of her being it was. After mentioning a few anecdotes from her early childhood and her admission to being a queen bee on par with Cordelia, that part of her life had been glossed over as if it never existed. It was like selfish, elitist LA Buffy wasn’t real or formative to who she was to them now. They never asked and she never told.

They were oblivious to the narcissism and the bullying. Oh, she’d never laid a hand on anyone, but their lifelong experience with Cordelia should have proven to them that there were more effective, efficient means of beating people down than the obvious. The pampered princess with the shallow, fragile home life was simply swept under the rug as if it were a disease cured by the fact that she was a pretty blonde Slayer who protected and befriended them. And maybe there was some truth to that perception, but it certainly wasn’t the whole truth.

Buffy looked into the crowd sensing him even as she tried not to let on to her companions. There was only one… being who had ever known every part of her. Who had looked at her at her ugliest, as her life was about to change forever and seen her truest beauty deep within. He had known her potential before she’d known she had any. One look from his wise old eyes and he’d seen the heart she’d kept barricaded beneath the layers of polished veneer and social status... and he had loved her. Maybe because they were meant for each other… or maybe because it had been similar to the life expected of him once upon a time…

Whatever the reason, he had looked and loved and only he really knew her. He knew about the way her ‘friends’ had turned on her after she had been Chosen. He knew about the powder keg that was her parent’s marriage and how it had imploded just as every other aspect of her once ‘perfect’ world shattered all around her. Hell, he knew about the weeks of that summer after Pike left her for new adventures and how she’d spent them in an insane asylum after she’d made the mistake of trusting her parents with some of her truth. She’d told him herself that Pike had ditched her at least partially because she wasn’t ready for sex. At the time, her virginity was the only thing she still had left that was hers and hers alone after becoming the Slayer had not only invaded her life, but her body as well. She had needed that control and that sense of ownership of some part of her identity. But a lot of that he knew firsthand, the rest he learned because he was interested enough to ask and listen.

In all of Buffy’s life, no one had ever been so devoted to really knowing and loving her. Not until her Angel. He was fascinated with the child that had started the journey. He would obsess over the details he didn’t know about the teenager she’d been before her Calling had burned away the shallow polish she’d worn as armor around her heart against the life she led. He listened and comforted her through her recital of the horrors she’d experienced in the institution her parents had chosen for her. He encouraged and inspired her secret love of reading broadening her tastes to include some classics. Angel became more than a vampire with a soul sworn to protect her, more than a potential lover or cute boyfriend… he was the best friend she’d ever had and her rock.

Even after Spike and Drusilla’s arrival in Sunnydale, it seemed each new trial only served to bring them closer. While his past—both as a human and a demon—still held things he feared and abhorred too much to tell her, her Angel had begun opening up to her more and more. So when they had finally made love in the heat of passion and need, it had been no surprise at all that it would be incomparable… the most incredible experience of their young—and not-so-young—lives. But that was never meant to be the surprise.

Meeting Angelus had been a surprise neither could’ve ever been able to anticipate. How could she be surprised by anything else after that, poor Jenny, aside? Xander’s self-righteous indignation was par for the course, and even the silent judgment of all the others hadn’t been that unexpected. Surviving his reign of torment as long as she had was another surprise she hadn’t been anticipating. She had been certain his hatred of her would mean a protracted, but sure end of her life. Instead it had been startling to learn he had a far more romantic yet terrifying end in mind for her… her most closely guarded nightmare: being turned.

Buffy barely suppressed a shiver at the direction her mind had turned. She was again thankful to have such oblivious friends as she thought she saw her mate before he was again gone. Angelus might hate Angel with every evil fiber of his being and see her own soul as its match, but he also recognized his mate in her. So his plan had shifted from simply driving her insane and killing her to seducing and turning her as his eternal partner in existence. His plan had been so simple yet ingenious to break down her soul, but not her mind so that she would succumb to his wish to take her place at his side for all time.

He would visit her often reciting her poetry from the tree outside her window his rich, silky voice so reminiscent of nights after patrol spent cuddled with her Angel at his apartment. He enjoyed catching her at her weakest… After a slay, when her blood ran hot and her body felt most alive, he would catch her by surprise, snatch her up into his achingly familiar embrace, and ravage her mouth just the way her Angel used to. Was it any wonder when she’d secretly resumed the sexual aspect of her relationship with Angel with his demonic counterpart?

Sadly, through it all, there was still only one being who knew her inside and out—soul or no soul. Her lover, her best friend, her protector-turned-enemy… her demon with the face of an Angel. He taunted her and played his pretend games with her friends so they’d never be the wiser. She often thought how funny it was that all the time Angelus was seducing her to her demise, her ‘Scoobies’ lived in terror of him coming for them when he hadn’t really attempted to hurt any of those truly close to her. Every day that they lived to see should have been suspicious in the extreme, but even Giles remained oblivious fearing Angelus’s next move while the demon remained 100 steps ahead. And she had been so close to falling under his spell irretrievably. When the realest thing in your world is the ‘darkness’, what hope does the ‘light’ have? And she would have been his… until Jenny.

Jenny’s murder and his subsequent torment of Giles, the closest thing to a father Buffy had, biology aside, had snapped her out of her Angelus-induced death march. She was sure he’d thought the pain and judgment would be short-lived, and expected it to eventually push her even farther into his arms. It was very likely that even now was what he was waiting for. He had sorely miscalculated for the second time in his existence. In one act of self-defense-turned-cruelty, he’d ended his hold on her and locked her defenses firmly into place for the first time since his return. With that one misstep, their dance of seduction shifted into something no less intense as the battle remained life and death… only now for the first time they were truly and clearly enemies. Though their passionate love for one another had not abated, it was now fuel to the war that raged between them. 

As she followed her friends home, unbeknownst to her, the demon who was experiencing his second failure since rising from grave was having trouble dealing with his failure to seduce her. Angelus sat brooding over how he could have made such a colossal misstep for an artistic whim and how he could fix it. Drusilla danced in singing about stars and Acathla hoping to bring her daddy out of his doldrums. With the wreckage of his plans for eternity scattered hopelessly around him like his sire’s ashes the night the soul had killed her, bringing forth the apocalypse suddenly seemed like the perfect thing to do.

…Crazy in love…lost in love…Angel and Buffy…Buffy and Angelus… Love is the truest madness and woe is a world subject to the truest love scorned…

The End


End file.
